


Recovery can be long and hard, but nobody said that it has to be lonely

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: Anger Management, Animal Instincts, Best Friends, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Loneliness, Medical Experimentation, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Platonic Cuddling, Post-Season/Series 02, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Project Cadmus (DCU) is Evil, Scars, Team Dynamics, Touch-Starved, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:28:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22500982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Conner knew two Garfield's- the Garfield before Cadmus and the Garfield after. It was obvious to anyone with eyes that Cadmus had done something so unspeakably terrible to him that Garfield wasn't the same person as the one who Conner woke up to, and while he loved his best friend no matter what, Conner knew that there was something going on, something dark and horrible that was eating Gar up from the inside, and he was going to get to the bottom of it, no matter what.Besides, how could he expect to be a superhero if he couldn't even save his best friend?
Relationships: Kon-El | Conner Kent & Garfield Logan
Comments: 17
Kudos: 92





	Recovery can be long and hard, but nobody said that it has to be lonely

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stellarseas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellarseas/gifts).



> LISTEN YOU GUYS I LOVE CONNER WITH ALL MY HEART AND SOUL. Why is his name spelt with an e? I've got no idea! but I love him!  
> A cool thing about Conner is that he is literally half Luthor and half Superman, and we don't know which path he's going to go down yet. I mean, obviously, because he's been in other versions of the comics we know that he's a good guy, but we don't know HOW he's going to get there in Titans. He's a literal child, but he has his father's memories and knowledge, so he understands things and knows things SUPER ADVANCED and I think sometimes that's overlooked. Also, don't you think that Cadmus cutting into Garfield's head and fiddling around with his brain would have done something to him cognitively, not just psychologically? I think about Phinneous Gage- the guy who had a metal beam straight through his head and he lived but his personality changed. I mean, come on- you better expect that something happened to Gar!  
> I was really proud of this when I was writing it but as I was editing it, I wasn't too sure, but it's gotten to the point that if I look at this any longer, I'm actually going to scream. I need to get rid of it or I'll never be free. This is MUCH longer than I was expecting, but I think it's worth it. I put A LOT of background things into this fic, so if there's anything you want to ask about or something in particular that you noticed, feel free to let me know and I'll explain why I did it as well as I can xx thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy it x

It was safe to say that Conner felt like he’d bitten off more than he could chew in terms of his new friends.

Well, ‘friends’ was a stretch. He didn’t know anyone other than Garfield, and none of the new people that he found himself surrounded by seemed to like him very much. They watched him out of the corner of their eye as if worried that he would act up, and they would talk to him like he was a child, which he didn’t appreciate. They kept throwing around terms like him having the mental capacity of a two-year-old, which he didn’t think was entirely accurate, considering that he knew about radiation and cloning and the splitting of atoms and mind control and things that they could only hope to know. That was information Conner was _born_ with. Krypto didn’t like the smell of some of them and growled when they came too close too fast, but he seemed to like Garfield more than he liked some of the others.

They were all strange, but strange in the way that Conner was strange. If that was a good thing or a bad thing, he wasn’t sure yet, but he knew that he liked not being alone anymore- not being the outlier, the one in a million.

The one who had been nice to him right away was Dick, the one who had pulled him from the cold, suffocating darkness and into the light, but other than being serious and talented, there was nothing strange about him. The same went for the other birds- Hank and Dawn- but Hank had been brutish and tough with him while Dawn had been delicate and welcomed him with mostly-open arms. Though he had a feeling that she partially blamed him for the death of her friend.

He didn’t get to interact with Rachel as much as he would have liked to. She left for Themyscira with the rest of the Amazon’s, but he thought that she was interesting, and wished she had stayed a little longer so he could understand her powers better, but it seemed obvious that she didn’t want to stay, and she’d been giving Garfield strange looks. He didn’t like that.

Rose seemed like a normal person until she got hurt, and then her skin stitched itself back together and her bones mended and her body snapped back into its normal position. It was a handy trick, one Conner sometimes wished that he could use himself, despite not getting hurt quite like the average person, and he just wished that she was friendly enough to talk to her about it. Sometimes she acted weird, almost as if there was another person living within her skin, which Dick had tried to explain to him was, in fact, _true_ , her half-brother Jericho was inhabiting her body, which Conner admittedly didn’t understand. It would explain why Rose would be so nice to him on occasion, though.

Another conundrum was Kory- the only thing he knew about her was that she was a princess from another planet and that she used to have powers that she had used to save him but now they were gone for some reason. She was fierce and aloof and sometimes scary, but she spoke Kryptonian, and sometimes he would find the courage to shyly ask her to teach him the meaning of the words he only knew from his father's memories. And often, she would smile and oblige him.

Conner didn’t see the boy that he saved from the building again, but he hoped that he was alright, because Conner thought about him every day.

But it was no question in anyone's mind, especially not Conner’s, that Garfield was his favourite. Garfield had been there with him the whole time, was there when he woke up, was there when he became San Francisco’s most wanted, was there when they were both kidnapped and taken to Cadmus…

He had always liked Garfield. Ever since they had met, and probably even before that, Conner just had a feeling that they would be friends. He’d always wanted a friend like Garfield. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but it made him all gooey inside when he thought about it. Conner had always wanted a friend like Garfield, and now he had one.

The thing that most excited him when he had first moved into the tower, was that he had to choose a room to call ‘his’, which was an odd concept. What was ‘his’? The shirt with the big red _S_ on it was his, but the symbol belonged to Superman, and the shirt belonged to someone else and he had just happened to pull it off the rack. His name was his, but it was given to him by someone else. Technically, Krypto was his, but Conner had taken him from the Cadmus labs when they escaped, and Krypto was a being all on his own, and you can’t own living things, could you?

Dick and Dawn had helped him choose a room, walking up and down the long hallway broken intermittently by closed doors on either side, careful to steer him away from the ones that looked empty yet lived in at the same time. Conner had naturally wanted the room closest to Garfield, but he had been regretfully informed that the room with the scratches on the walls and the dark bed-spread and books still open on the desk was occupied by Rachel.

Honestly, Conner couldn’t understand that. Why would Rachel choose the room closest to Garfield if she couldn’t even stand him? Sure, apparently she had been the one to break him free from the hold Cadmus had on him, but Conner had watched them the last couple of days between them being rescued and Rachel flying to Themyscira. She wouldn’t even look at Garfield much less stand next to him, and they barely even had any interaction. Even when she left, the only person she said goodbye to was Dick, and when the plane took off, Garfield watched it go with sad eyes.

But regardless, Conner had settled on the room down the hall, a long room with a view of a park, and Dick had told him that he had made a great choice, but Conner had a suspicion that he didn’t really mean that, and he was just glad that Conner hadn’t made a fuss about the rooms.

Krypto loved it and settled in right away. He claimed a corner section of the room for himself and Conner had given him a pile of blankets and pillows to sleep on, but at the end of the day, Krypto still preferred sleeping at Conner’s feet on the end of the bed.

It was a new feeling, having a roof over his head. Sure, the Cadmus labs had a roof, but somehow this felt… different. Better. More like a place that he could stay and be cared for than just a building with a roof. Kory had told him that this feeling he described to her was called ‘home’.

Garfield came and visited him in his room, even when he wasn’t feeling up to it, and Conner really appreciated him for that. He would always come with some new food for Conner to try- mostly green stuff and pizza- and he would usually end up enjoying it. He sometimes brought new games to play with Conner, and Conner would end up mastering it soon enough, much to Garfield’s shock and delight. But really the best thing that Garfield brought with him with his company, and that’s all Conner really wanted.

But Conner had noticed how differently the others treated Garfield. They left him out of team meetings and important briefings and left him to do his own thing while the others trained as a unit. Even Rose, who Conner had discovered was fairly new, was included more than Garfield was. Dick and Kory were always nice to him, and so were the rest of the team to an extent, but nobody treated him like he was actually part of the team.

Often, Conner would watch as Garfield approached a team member to spar in the training room, only to be knocked back and watch sadly as they left him alone and he was forced to go train by himself. It happened on a member of occasions and not just with training.

It was obvious to anyone with eyes that Garfield spent most of the time alone out of any of the Titans, and that his self-imposed isolation wasn’t by choice. Conner wasn’t too sure how his power worked but he was glad that Garfield had the tiger residing in his bones to keep him company.

They were both outcasts on a team full of outcasts.

Conner had noticed a vast difference between the Garfield he knew before Cadmus and the Garfield after. This new Garfield almost never smiled, and if he did, they never quite reached his eyes and were fake more often than not. Conner never caught him playing new games or listening to new music- it was the same songs over and over again, and every time he would beat a new level on a game (sometimes with Conner’s help) instead of playing the new level and progressing the game, he would play the whole thing all over from the start. He would never leave the tower alone if he could help it and would always convince Dick or Kory or Conner to come with him. Not that Conner needed any convincing.

It wasn’t as though Conner liked him any less, of course not, but it was a very noticeable difference. Conner had liked the Garfield that had been with him at the very beginning when he had first woken up, and while he still enjoyed this Garfield, he wanted back _that_ Garfield.

So when Bruce Wayne- a name Conner didn’t recognise but held great respect for, somehow- finally managed to smooth over Conner’s face on all the wanted advertisements in the newspapers and the Crime Stopper’s report of his face on TV, he knocked softly on Garfield’s bedroom door and pulled his hat down lower over his eyes as he waited. “Do you want to go out with me?” He blurted the moment the door opened. Krypto barked beside him. “Uh- sorry boy. With us? Just for a walk, maybe, or somewhere quiet so we can talk. I want to… to talk. Please?”

The information was thrown at him so quickly that it was all Garfield could do for a few moments to blink as his brain tried to process it. “Uh… yeah, sure,” he paused from turning back into the room to get changed with one hand on the doorframe to waggle his eyebrows at Conner. “Just to clarify, this is just two mates and a dog taking a walk through San Francisco and not, as your words would suggest, going on a date to a fancy vegan restaurant?”

“Uh,” It was Conner’s turn to be confused. He wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. “No?”

“Didn’t think so,” Garfield winked before disappearing into the room again only to reappear soon after wearing his familiar red and white jacket and a hat of his own. “Where to, big man?”

Conner honestly had no planned location, and was just about to say as much, but Garfield was looking at him with such pure blind faith that Conner couldn’t bring himself to break that trust. “Um… the park, I think,” he suggested eventually. “I remember Hank telling me that the lights made it look really pretty at night. I’d like to see it in person.”

“Wait,” Garfield raised an eyebrow. “Hank said that?”

“Yeah,” Conner nodded. “He used different words though. More manly words. There was quite a lot of grunting involved, I think.”

That was a bit of an exaggeration, but Conner wasn’t going to admit that, especially not when Garfield’s face lit up in the first real burst of laughter that Conner had seen since returning from Cadmus. “Sounds like a plan,” Garfield said through giggles. “Lead the way.”

Though Hank had probably been pulling his leg, he was right about the park looking very pretty at night, with the fairy lights strung up in the branches of the trees so the tiny white lights shone through the full leaves, and the fountain lit up from underneath with rainbow floodlights so the colours sparkled through the water like glistening diamonds. There were people here and there, sitting on picnic blankets with flutes of champagne or couples walking dogs, but other than someone taking up a small corner of the park every now and again, Conner and Garfield were pretty much alone, and they watched Krypto leap and dance and prance around the new open space for a little while before they secured themselves a comfy spot in the near centre of the park.

The look of excitement on Garfield’s face was undermined by the way his eyes kept darting to every new person to enter the park or walk by them and he kept his head on a swivel. “So dude, what’s up?” he said as he ran his hands over the soft grass.

There was something in the openness of Garfield’s face that had Conner hesitating to answer. He was grateful that Krypto, who had finished chasing the birds around the lush green park, had come over and laid beside him with his head resting in his lap so that he had something to take his mind off of the conversation. “I um, you…’ Conner tried, but he stopped when he didn’t like what was coming out, and he ran his fingers through Krypto’s fur with a frown as he thought. Garfield gave him all the time he needed and waited patiently until Conner had his thoughts gathered enough to continue. “I want to talk about what happened to me. To you. To us. At Cadmus. I want to know what they did to you.”

Honestly Conner should have expected the reaction he received in result. Garfield’s whole body stilled and his eyes went wide. It was hard to tell if he was even breathing. “Come on, dude,” he cleared his throat and his words came out strangled. “We don’t need to do this. Let’s just enjoy the nice night before we have to go back, yeah?”

It may have been a little rude, but Conner continued as if he hadn’t heard Garfield’s hopeful refusal. ‘It’s just… I don’t know. I remember what they did to me but I have no clue _how_. They made me… _forget_.” he paused, the mere thought of trying to recall what they made him forget, even for a moment, pained him like nothing else. And it made him angry. He knew that nothing good came when Superman and Lex Luther got angry. “They made me forget about you. About Superman. About Eve. What it was like to be good and to help people. What it was like to… to exist.”

The look on Garfield’s face made Conner pause again, and Garfield filled in the new silence with words of his own. “Conner, don't,” he said so softly that if it weren’t for his excellent, almost super hearing, Conner wouldn’t have heard him. “We shouldn’t.”

But Conner was too wrapped up in his own thoughts to heed his friend's warnings. "I guess I knew deep down that they were using me to do bad things, to hurt people, but I was stuck so deep in the darkness that I couldn't feel it. I didn't know how to make it stop. But Dick found me. I don't know how, but he did."

"Yeah," Garfield agreed quietly. "He seems to have a few ways of doing that."

Krypto nipped at Conner's fingers and he returned to rubbing him behind the ears once he finally realized that he'd stopped. "I felt so… so bad, I guess. I don't really know. Feelings are still a little new for me. I'm not sure if they're _my_ feelings or leftover emotions from my dads' memories. But I know that the hate I feel for Cadmus and what they made me do is _mine_. I can't believe I let them do that. They made me kill all those people at the carnival and I… I-"

"No, Conner," Garfield said, solemn, when Conner tapered off, staring at the empty space between them, populated by nothing but soft green grass and brown winged moths searching for the light. "You didn't kill those people. I did."

It was all Conner could do not to laugh. He didn't know much about people yet, but he had a feeling that it wouldn't be a good idea to start laughing. " _You?_ No. No way. You wouldn't. You're way too nice and good and kind to even joke about that," Garfield looked up at him with a serious, tortured expression and Conner faltered. "But… I thought…"

"You thought that you killed those people but you didn't. You never laid a finger on them," Garfield said. "I let you take the blame because you had already told the others that it was your fault, and letting you take the fall for what I did was easier than accepting what they made me do. That wasn't fair. That's not what friends do. I'm sorry that I didn't tell you."

Conner honestly wasn't quite sure where to go from here. He wished he was better at talking to people. Garfield just looked so… _small_ , smaller than normal and all Conner wanted to do was reach out and hug him, but something told him that Garfield didn't want to be touched. So instead, he settled for reaching forward as far as he could, inadvertently pushing Krypto out of the way, and fiddled with the laces on Garfield's shoes. "Gar?" Conner asked. Garfield refused to look at him. "What did they do to you?"

Still, Garfield refused to meet his eyes and bit his lip so hard that the unfortunately familiar tang of iron on his tongue made the tiger growl in satisfaction and his stomach roil in disgust. "I don't want to talk about it."

Nothing made sense to Conner anymore. Garfield was his best friend, and Conner loved him very much but he just couldn't understand. Maybe that made him a bad person. He certainly felt like it anyway. "Why not? Maybe it'll be good for you. Maybe it'll make you feel better. Less… guilty. It made me feel a little better."

But Garfield was just shaking his head. "You're braver than I am, Conner. That's what happens when half of you is Superman. I-I just can't."

"I don't know. I think you're pretty brave," Conner replied and reached out just far enough to brush his fingers against the back of Garfield's hand. It was shaking. "You became friends with some guy in a coma and came after me when I ran away. And you tried to protect me when Cadmus broke into the tower. I think that's much braver than going into hiding and surrendering without a fight like I did."

"I don't think I can do this," Garfield whispered, blinking tears out of his eyes. He rose a hand to rub at the back of his head before dropping it limply back down to his lap. "It's hard."

Brow furrowed, Conner wrapped his fingers around Garfield's hand to try and stop the shaking, forgetting for a moment that he was trying not to touch him too much. "I think it's supposed to be hard. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it," he gave Garfield's hand a squeeze. "Please, Gar? You're not the same person you were when we met and I know that Cadmus did something to change that. I want my friend back. I want to help. How can I ever call myself a hero if I can't even help my best friend?"

Somehow, Garfield's shoulders hunched even further and his head hung down lower. He fiddled with the drawstring on his pants so he didn't have to meet Conner's gaze. "It's… complicated," he began haltingly, voice emotionless and _wrong._ "They were… almost nice to me at first. Well, as nice as kidnapping mad scientists could be, I guess. They let me watch TV and they gave all me the food I could ever ask for, even the outrageous stuff that I didn't even want but thought it would be funny to make them search for. But when I woke up, when they first took us, they had put me in a weird sort of… I don't know. It was some kind of suit. Um… do you know what a straight jacket is?"

An image of a white shirt with long sleeves and straps and buckles came to mind, and for some reason, Conner's chest felt tight and his arms restricted, almost like recalling a distant memory. "Yeah. I don't know why, but I do. Why did they put you in that thing? Did you fight back?"

Tentatively, Garfield shook his head. "I couldn't fight back even if I wanted to. The straight jacket- well, it wasn't really a straight jacket, but it worked like one. I don't really know what it did. It… I couldn't feel the tiger while I was wearing it. Almost like it severed our connection. They didn't get rid of it, it was still there, but it was like they put it in a deep sleep," he paused to lick at his lips and to take a deep breath. "But Mercy… I don't know why I believed her, but she convinced me that she was my friend and that she thought it was time that I let myself want things. That I should put myself first for once. I guess I'm just an idiot, huh?"

"Not really. Mercy was very convincing," Conner said. "She told me that she cared about me and wanted me to be safe. To understand who I am and what I can do. To not be afraid anymore. That's all I ever wanted, and I believed her, even though Eve told me what Cadmus really was. She used us. You've got nothing to be ashamed of."

"T-That's not what I'm ashamed of," Garfield admitted as he shut his eyes tight as if recalling a painful memory, and Conner had no doubt that he was. "It gets so much worse, Conner. I did… they made me do some bad things. Really bad things. I…"

Silence fell between them as Garfield sat there hunched over and hugging himself with one arm, and Conner just watched him, still holding his other hand in his own, and tried to figure out the right thing to say. He had never been particularly good at words and feelings and his first few months of life hadn't really improved that. And considering half of his DNA was from Lex Luther, he was at a genetic disadvantage. But he knew one thing for sure- if Cadmus had hurt his friend, he would go back there and raze the labs to the ground himself. "Gar?" He settled on eventually after a few minutes of thinking. "You know that you can tell me anything, right? Good or bad. I won't ever judge you."

A bitter, broken laugh wretched itself from Garfield's chest. "I think that this goes a bit beyond judgement, and talk of 'good and bad', Kon."

Conner blinked. He'd never had a nickname before, but he liked Kon. "Please?" was all he said.

Apparently, Garfield didn't need too much convincing, or maybe Conner was just that good, but Garfield ran a heavy hand down his face as he sighed. “They uh, they realized that nothing they said or did would convince me to turn against the Titans, so one day they dragged me into a-a medical room, and they gave me some kind of weak sedative, and then they… they…” he had to stop to swallow back the bile that had risen in his throat. The emotionless way that he spoke about his time at Cadmus before changed suddenly to be filled with disgust, anger, fear and so many other things at the same time. A wild look came over his eyes as he covered his mouth with his hand. His words came out muffled. “They c-cut me open, and they did some things, and they c-changed the way I think. They… I don’t even know. They told me that they fixed me, made me stronger, but they broke me instead. And the worst part is that I was dumb enough and desperate enough to believe them.”

Something heavy and cold settled like a stone in Conner’s gut. Garfield looked like he was about to throw up, or cry, or both. He didn’t like the turn this conversation had taken. “Can I… can I see it?”

For a moment, Conner was afraid that he’d overstepped. He was just about to offer up an apology, but he didn’t have the time, because suddenly Garfield was slowly leaning forward, taking off his hat and running a hand over the back of his head, moving the bright green strands out of the way and exposing a perfectly circular scar, slightly jagged around the outside, but it was still a perfect circle nonetheless. It was red and puffy and obviously still healing, and Conner finally understood why he had recently started to absently rub at it.

Without thinking, Conner found himself reaching a hand out towards it. He probably should have asked. Especially when Garfield caught him doing it and Conner heard a faint, barely-there growl low in his throat and Conner was worried that he was about to get his hand bitten off by a very protective tiger, but the snarling was over as suddenly as it arrived. “Careful,” Garfield cautioned quietly, “It’s still pretty tender.”

Considering half of him was Superman, that was a pretty big ask, but Conner was determined to try. As lightly as he could, Conner rested his finger on the puffy part of Garfield’s head and ran a finger gently over the rough scar. Garfield winced and shifted under his touch, but if he was in any pain, he was kind enough not to mention it.

Slowly, Conner found himself adding more fingers until he was pulling Garfield towards him with one arm while his whole hand was around the scar, massaging his scalp as gently as he could, as he struggled to pull his eyes away from it. The previous growl had been replaced by a deep purr as Garfield’s eyes fluttered closed and he stopped struggling against Conner’s hold to rest his forehead on Conner’s shoulder.

As Conner wound Garfield’s hair around his finger, his vision suddenly switched and he could see _inside_ Garfield’s head, something he had never attempted before. Personally, Conner had never seen a brain, but Lex Luther obviously had, and Garfield’s was _not_ an average brain- at least, not any more. Maybe it was programmed to be different, with the tiger sharing a body with him and all, but this just looked _different_. It was _wrong_. Like a child had gotten ahold of a very complicated puzzle and instead of trying to find the right places for each piece, they had given up and instead started cutting and tearing up pieces to make them fit wherever they could, even at the sake of ruining the picture. The puzzle was still technically completed with no left-over pieces, but it wasn’t what it was supposed to be, and it was ugly and ruined and unusable again. It’s not what a brain should look like.

“It’s bad. It’s really bad,” Conner eventually managed after they had been sitting together in an accidental embrace, his voice sounding scratchy and strangled after about 15 minutes of silence. “Does it… hurt?”

“Sometimes,” Garfield admitted, resting his full weight against Conner, but Conner could hardly feel it. He was very light. “But I’m used to pain, by now. Especially as the tiger- it likes fighting and getting hurt whenever it can. But that’s not the worst part, though.”

“Worst part?” Conner frowned. “There’s _more_?”

Humming, Garfield buried his face in the crook of Conner’s neck and spoke softly, knowing that Conner would hear him, and he was too exhausted to put much energy into it. “Yeah, I’m tired all the time. I get confused much easier and it takes me longer to understand certain things, simple things, things that used to take me seconds. Easy things are hard now. Sometimes, I might be in the middle of a conversation, and I just forget, and I check out for a little while, and I feel bad because I had no idea what they were saying. Most days, I can’t even find the energy to leave my room, because I know that it’s _safe_ in there. I’ve been struggling to talk to people, even the others. I don’t want to leave the tower alone because I’m worried that Cadmus will find me and take me again and nobody would even know that I was gone.”

“That’s not true,” Conner interjected, strangely indignant. By his side, Krypto whined. “I’d notice if you were missing. Even if the others didn’t, I always would. I’d miss you too much.’

Garfield managed a weak chuckle and considering Conner hadn’t heard him laugh at all since before they were taken, he was inclined to take it as a win. “Thanks, man, I’m actually relieved to hear it,” he said before he sighed and screwed his face up. “I know that _realistically_ the other’s would probably know if I went missing, but it’s gotten pretty hard to trust them lately. Cadmus changed the way that I thought about them when they opened me up, like, physically made me think about them differently. And the tiger… hm. It’s a little hard to explain to outsiders, and the others still don’t really get it. I speak to it through feelings sometimes, and it has its own opinions of things. There’s two of us. It warns me when it doesn’t feel safe in a particular situation or when it can taste a lie or when it smells something that’s not to be trusted. It’s been warning me that the other Titans aren’t to be trusted anymore. Not even Rachel, and she used to be the only outsider that the tiger could trust," He finally pulled away, slowly and reluctantly, and Conner already missed the contact. "That probably sounds crazy to someone who doesn't have a savage beast sharing their skin, but it's true."

"No, no, I think I understand," Conner said. In a way, he did- while he was still Conner and was still his own person, there were still two parts of him warring inside for dominance, the Superman side and the Lex Luther side, and he sometimes found it hard to let one rein supreme with good and evil screaming in his ear. "But you trust me though, right?"

"Yeah, Kon, of course, I trust you," Garfield replied, but though his eyes looked glassy, he sounded genuine, and the new nickname made Conner's whole body feel warm with joy. "You're pretty much the only person that we trust at the moment. And by 'we', I'm… I'm talking about me and the tiger, not me and the other Titans. I don't want to speak for them. I have no idea how they feel about you."

Krypto made a quiet, aborted barking noise before he crawled across the grass to Garfield and rested his chin on his knee, looking up at him with sad, sorrowful eyes and whined again- a high, needy sound. Absently, Garfield reached a hand over to scratch him behind the ears. Conner laughed. "It looks like Krypto thinks that you still have something that you want to say."

There was a small smile curling up at the corner of Garfield's lips as Krypto licked at his knuckles. "Well, Krypto is a very smart dog," he said. He wouldn't meet Conner's eyes again, and Conner had a feeling that the next few minutes were going to be a little stressful. "There's this song… like an old one, a Beethoven era one. And every time they played it, it would be like a trigger, you know? I would just… fall asleep, and the worst, most savage instincts of the tiger would come out, and we would lose control and kill a bunch of people, and I only remembered when I woke up. And it’s not like the tiger wanted to do it, either. I may not let it kill people if I can help it and it may not get its fill of meaty meals, but it felt bad every time. And…”

“And you’re worried that if you leave the tower or listen to new music or progress a game to a new, unexplored level,” Conner continued quietly once he realized and Garfield trailed off. “You’ll hear the song, and you’ll lose control, and you’ll hurt a lot of people, and nobody will know why you’re doing it.”

The next pause was one Conner expected, and Garfield hung his head so low that his chin hit his chest and Conner could see the spot where the new scar was hidden by a sea of green hair. Something made Conner wonder why Garifled dyed it- he’d have to ask him about that some time. “Yeah,” Garfield muttered. “I guess that makes me a terrible person, huh? Too weak to do anything about it and too scared to tell anyone.”

For a few seconds, Conner could do nothing but watch him, and for the first time, he wished that he could read minds. “If you’re waiting for me to tell you that I’ll stop you if you lose control again, you’ll be waiting for a very long time,” Garfield’s head snapped up so quickly that his hair shifted and Krypto made a sound of displeasure on his lap. “Because that won't happen. You’ll never attack another person like that again, and I won’t stop you. I won't need to. Because you may not think so anymore, but you’re good. You’re the only good I’ve seen since joining the Titans. Everyone else… they’ve got bad in them. Hank drinks and takes things that make him silly and stupid and blames his pain on everyone else. Dawn likes hurting people more than she likes helping them. Dick doesn’t even know what it means to be good any more, even though he tries, he’s still on the cusp of being bad. Rose was born dangerous, and the only thing keeping her on the side of good is her brother sharing her body. Kory tries, but she’s dangerous, and her temper means that at any moment she could snap. So could I- half of me is one of the evilest men on the planet. I could break at any moment. What’s to stop me from killing one of you? Who could stop me? Nobody could. But you… you’re _good_ , Gar. You’ve got good in your veins and kindness in your soul, and I know that you feel guilty and like you’re irredeemable, but you’re not. You’re… what do you call it? The moral compass of the Titans. The glue.”

“The glue,” Garfield repeated. “I don’t want to be the glue. Why can’t someone else be the glue instead of making me do it? I’m just as tired and scared as the rest of them. Why can’t Dick be the glue?”

“Because it’s hard, but they think it’s easy,” Conner said gently. “Dick thinks that anyone can do it. But that’s not true. He’s never had to be the glue. If it was easy, everyone would do it. It takes a special kind of person to do something, even though it’s hard.”

Sniffling, Garfield wiped impatiently at his nose with the back of his hand. “When did you get so wise?” he said with a laugh that sounded like it was through tears, but with his head down, Conner couldn’t tell if he was crying or not.

“I guess maybe that’s the only good thing about being half Superman and half Lex Luther,” Conner said. “I get the heart of Superman and the brains of Lex Luther. That’s what being wise means… right?” When Garfield didn’t answer, and all Conner got in response was muffled sobbing, he tried something else. “Gar? I’m sorry for what Cadmus did to you. It was wrong, and if I had known… I don’t know what I would have done. It wouldn’t have been anything good, though.”

“You’ve got nothing to apologise for,” Garfield said, wiping away his tears. “You didn’t do those things to me. You didn’t ask for me to be kidnapped. You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”

“But my father owns the company, and Operation Rakshasa…” Conner said and Garfield shivered at the name. “That was his idea. Eve told me about it, and I guess that I vaguely understood what she was talking about, but I never in a million years would I have thought that they would do that to you. And I'm sorry I couldn't save you."

Because Garfield had waited so patiently for him to gather his thoughts before, Conner repaid the favour as Garfield slowly sat up and rubbed at his eyes. "You were just as under their control as I was. I don't blame you for what happened. How could I? You're my best friend."

"Well, I don't blame you for any of the things Cadmus made you do while we were there," Conner said definitively, leaving no room for discussion. "And you should stop worrying about it because I doubt that any of your other friends blame you either. If they do then… I don't know. I'll throw them through a window or something."

Garfield laughed and reached across the small space between them to lightly swat Conner on the shoulder in a friendly way, "No you won't," he said. And Conner knew that he wouldn't. That the thought wouldn't even cross his mind again. And some part of him took solace in the fact that despite how brutish he looked and how dangerous he could potentially be, Garfield knew that he was essentially harmless. "Thanks though, Kon. That makes me feel a little better for what it's worth."

The stillness was broken by a sharp ringing from Garfield's pocket, so loud and so sudden that not even the tiger's natural instincts couldn't stop him from jumping at the unexpected intrusion and he quickly fished it out of his pocket to silence the noise. "Oh- Dick, hi. Is everything alright?"

It was obvious that Garfield was trying to mask his worry, but he wasn't doing a very good job of it. "Hey, Gar, where are you? Are you with Conner?" Dick replied, and Conner was pleased to realise that he could hear every word. "We've been looking for you guys for ages."

"Yeah, I'm with Conner," Garfield replied. "Sorry about that we just decided to go for a walk. We're at a park- um, I think maybe Hank knows which one? I'm not too sure."

There was a heavy sigh from Dick's end of the line. "You can't just do that, Gar. You need to tell people when you leave, otherwise, we worry for nothing and nobody knows where you are. What if something had happened? What if Cadmus had found you again? What then?"

"Uh, yeah, sorry Dick," Garfield said as he absently raised a hand to rub at the back of his head again. "I guess I didn't think. We'll… we'll be back soon."

"Good. We'll all be waiting."

Frustrated, Conner reached out and yanked the phone out of Garfield's hand before he could reply and brought it to his own ear. "Hello. This is Conner. Gar isn't going to come home yet, because he doesn't want to, and I don't want him to either. So we're going to hang out for a little bit longer, and we'll come back when we're good and ready, and if you have a problem with that you can come and find us and drag us back home by our ears. But I'd like to see you try."

"Now, Conner, you wait just a minute-"

Dick's response was cut off and Conner couldn't understand why until he looked at his hand and realized that he'd crushed the phone between his fingers in his frustration, and it now dangled on his palm in a mangled heap of metal and wires and glass. "That’s alright," Garfield said, but his heart didn't sound in it. "I needed to get a new phone anyway. No big deal."

"I'm sorry," Conner whispered as the pieces of the phone fell to the grass. "I didn't mean to. I just got… I was just so _angry."_

"That's fine, man, don't worry about it," Garfield reassured and for some reason, Conner felt like he didn't deserve it. He wasn’t sure what ‘it’ was, but it was a feeling he couldn’t shake. “You’re a big guy. You’re half-Superman for crying out loud. You’re expected to lose control every now and then.”

“But Superman doesn’t get angry. Lex Luther does,” Conner said quietly, still staring at the broken pieces of the phone like that would justify everything. “I don’t know why they make me so angry. Dick saved me from the darkness when Cadmus had me under their control, but he talks to me like I’m a child, and he treats you like a servent. Not an equal. And I don’t… I don’t know why he does that. Doesn’t he know that you’re just as human as he is? Just as important? I understand him not getting me- he says I have the mental capacity of a two-year-old, and maybe that’s true and he thinks that because I was born out of a test tube a few months ago that I’m a baby, but I know more about the world than he could ever know. And you’re so much stronger than he thinks you are. I don’t get it.”

Garfield’s shoulders rose and fell as he sighed. “Conner, one thing you’re going to need to learn, is that everyone thinks that they’re better than you. And in some cases, they are. In other cases, you just need to shut your mouth and take it. Because nobody in this world is ever going to love you more than you love yourself, yeah? Some people will always think that you’re just a little kid in an adult body, but you and I both know differently, and sometimes, that’s all that matters.”

“I don’t care what they think about me,” Conner said. “But you’re my best friend, and I don’t want them to think that you’re weaker because of what Cadmus did to you. I don’t want you to be the glue or the outsider or the second-best anymore. I want you to be part of the team.”

“Some things just don’t happen the way you want them to,” Garfield said quietly, almost too quietly, as he let Krypto lick at his fingers again.

“I want them to respect you,” Conner said. “If they knew about what Cadmus did to you and how you survived it, maybe they would.”

When Garfield didn’t answer, Conner could only watch him and hope that he hadn’t said anything wrong. “You’re my best friend, Kon,” he repeated. “You know that, right? You always will be. No matter what.”

Conner didn’t know much, but he knew that. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve never really had any sort of friend before, especially not a best friend, but… I’m glad that you’re my first. I’m glad I met you. You’re the best friend that I could ever ask for. And if you want me to throw Hank out the window, just let me know.”

The laugh that Conner managed to surprise out of Garfield was so pure and genuine and real that he smiled so wide that Conner caught a glimpse of his teeth before he covered his hand with his mouth and leant back slightly, his body shaking with the effort and having to throw an arm over his stomach. Conner had never seen him laugh like that before, and the joy radiating off of his friend made him start to giggle as well. “You’re the best, Kon,” Garfield said through panting, and the tears he wiped away from the corners of his eyes now were happy tears. “How about we go and get some ice cream, huh?”

Conner frowned. “But Dick said he wanted you back…?”

“Yeah, and you told him that he could go shove his orders where the sun don’t shine,” Garfield grinned, and Conner thought for a second that he could see a glint of the tiger peeking out. He looked wild and feral but in a good way. He slapped his hat back over his head as he stood up. “Now, how about that ice cream? I know a great place that makes a special kind of ice cream, like waffles and cereal and pop tarts.”

The mention of all the unique ice cream flavours made Conner’s eyes widen in excitement. “Can we go? Please?”

“Yeah, big guy, let’s go,” Garfield beamed, as he stood and slapped his hat back onto his head. Krypto shifted with the movement and climbed to his feet when Conner followed Garfield’s lead. “Thanks for this, man. I think… I uh…”

Conner didn’t know people very well, not yet at least, but he had a feeling that he knew what Garfield was trying to say. “No worries. You would have done the same for me. What are best friends for, right?”

**Author's Note:**

> That ice cream shop probably doesn't exist, but I know that shops like that exist SOMEWHERE so I thought it would work. Also, do other countries have Crime Stopper's as well, or is it just here in Australia?? I've got no idea.
> 
> This is also a last-minute decision to gift this to @infinity_girl because you've left so many kind comments on my Titans fics and such encouraging words, and this is to show that I really appreciate it x


End file.
